The Time Machine | 7 Multiple abstraction theory

Bert G. J. Frederiks

The Time Machine

Prototype of a Conscious Machine

7 Multiple abstraction theory

In the previous chapters I designed some machinery. It’s not finished but, with a little jump of fate, it already is a mechanism we can theorize about, with the advantage that it is not too complex yet.

Many things I said in previous chapters are, if you try to analyze them, very complex, because they contain propositions with regard to different levels, or within different interpretations. For instance, to speak of patterns is different from speaking of the content of patterns. To speak of activation patterns is different from speaking of sensitivity patterns. To ask what something is subjectivity is different from asking what something is objectivity. Temporal images are not static images. How does this relate to consciousness, knowledge, sense, meaning?

Looking at it from a distance, one notices that one can and needs to explain the status, and ongoing change of a neural network, with regard to many different aspects. There is nothing special about this, compared to how we think about other natural objects, if we take them for as complex as they are. It’s just a matter of asking questions. Take any object from your desk and ask yourself what it is composed of chemically, or what components it is constructed of mechanically, or how much labor went into it, what its weight is physically, what its history is ontogenetically and phylogenetically, how we can use it, and so on.

Or take as an example a silicon chip out of which computers are made. A user of such a chip looks only at the electronic circuit in it, because that is what he uses it for. The manufacturer, however, has lots of other systems to take into account. An interesting one is the thermal system. If you put the transistors that are used most often on a certain spot on the silicon chip, then this spot might become so hot that the silicon would brake. Also, heath may have repercussions on the working of the electronic circuit. One might say that, next to the electronic circuit, there is also a heat circuit.

As I see it, what we do in all these cases, is to build, in our thoughts or on paper, different, but interconnected systems of all these aspects of reality. These systems are usually commensurable, so together they may form a larger, more entailing system. Two interrelated questions then arise: What is the relation between these systems, and are these systems to be localized in our thought or in reality?

Meta-systems, immanence, and reference

Something may have system – not a system, but system. This, to me, is the basic idea of what ‘system’ means. Something having system is a property, a structural property, which we in practice expect anything to have.

When we say that something is a system, then it is erroneous to think of a system qua system as itself being real, because then we objectify the idea ‘system.’ We can, however, make mathematical and logical systems, which we rightfully think of as existing, inside our head and culture.

Why and/or when exactly is it erroneous to objectify the system of something? And do we really mean to objectify it?

Systems qua systems do not exist as something real – as what Germans, I think of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger, call “Tatsache,” and what in Dutch W.F. Hermans calls “daadwerkelijkheden.” A system is not a thing. Of course, anything we think of has a subjective existence, and anything we say, or write down, has a social existence. One may, further more, muddle one’s thoughts by thinking that subjective experiences are very real to us, so they objectively do exist. But this does not bring us anywhere.

A system is a mathematical and/or logical construct. It usually is also a social construct. As a social construct it does indeed exist. The complexity comes from the fact that, most often, we make systems of something. This may be something we find in nature, such as the solar system, or it may be something of our own design, such as a computer or a neural machine. In the latter case the making of the system phylogenetically usually precedes the making of the machinery.

We often, and sometimes erroneously, objectify the idea of a system, for instance in speaking about “a computer-system,” while referring to a specific machine – only the inventor of the computer truly materialized and ‘objectified’ a system. The same is done with regard to, for instance, the solar system. As I shall explain, this is not necessarily erroneous if a double, chain reference is meant. In fact this error is nothing exceptional in western languages, and especially English, but we must be careful.

‘Real,’ socially constructed systems are abstractions. They are a faculty of thought, stories, and culture. A system is both form and content. It contains structure. It is a construct – a human construct. In this sense it does exist. It is highly immanent. It is supposed to be a ‘symbolic copy’ of the real. Basically a system contains elements, each having certain properties, and it contains relations between these elements, with these relations having properties too, and all of these elements and relations may be systems themselves. None of these elements qua elements and none of these relations really exist, except as a social, human construct, but when we objectify the system as referring to something real, we usually forget this.

This actually is to be expected of any mammal brain. To animals there is hardly any difference between what they think or imagine, and what the real might be. It is even a bit odd to say it this way, since it presupposes a distinction which even we cannot really make. As language-using animals we can, however, discover this distinction, because we can – if we are not too narcissistic – notice that we make errors with regard to our perception of the real. This thought will, I think, be mostly incomprehensible to other animals. Animals do have fantasies, from which they will try to change the world, but, where we would try to adapt the world to our needs, other mammals will more often adapt themselves.

Having said all this, it is clear that we run, among others, into all kinds of semiotic problems. For instance if we say to talk about a system while we actually refer to a machine. Reification is just one of the many errors we make in our using of language.

Expressing in language a relation between elements, or between an element and a property, is making a statement. If one does this with regard to the whole system, then it becomes a theory.

A theory can be true or false with regard to its inner structure – consistency – like with mathematics and logic, or, if it is a theory about something real, it can be true or false with regard to reality.

With regard to systems we do not speak of “true” or “false” – at least not in Dutch or German. If a system is, on itself, consistent within itself, then we say it is “right” or “correct,” if not, then it is wrong or incorrect. If we expect a system to conform to reality, then we also think of it as being right or wrong with regard to reality.

As such we must distinguish relations within systems from its relations with the real. These relations with the real can be seen as a kind of outer structure. One can also distinguish an outer structure of one system within another, larger system, in which it is contained. Except in pure mathematics, logic, and representationalism, usually each element, of a system of something real, is thought of as referring to something which really exists. So with regard to outer structures we have to distinguish two types of relations. Relations between two systems, within a larger system, I call immanent. Relations between a system and the real I call transcendent.

The same distinction can be made with regard to truth. A theory can be immanently true – that is self-consistent – or it can be transcendentally true – that is in conformity with the real. Transcendent truth cannot be determined solely logically. In practice transcendent truth, or validity, is, also in science, ‘found’ through belief, talent, training, and practice with regard to one’s senses, plus ‘add-ons’ such as measuring-instruments. The only, really scientific solution will be to apply our knowledge of thinking machines, because these machines are real, are part of the real, and as such have contact with the real, and of these machines we may learn to know how they work – I admit that there is a chicken-and-egg problem here, but at least I can show inner consistency.

We must always keep in mind that a system is in the first place a human construct which is something on its own. Secondly a system may be embedded within other systems, and it may embed other systems within itself. This is the immanent structure of a system. As such it is, what I call, a gathering structure. Thirdly a system usually is thought of as having connections with the real. This I call the transcendent structure of a system. This transcendent structure with the real is not part of the system qua system. This is what I need to explicate with regard to consciousness in order to prove that my machine has it.

It is difficult to explicate exactly all the possible, transcendent connections between a system as a construct, and the real. In practice systems are used in many different ways. Important is the semiotic idea of elements of the system qua system referring to, standing for, or, as I prefer, replacing something real. We, or, better, our neural network, will try to keep these replacements up to date with reality. It entails continuous checking. If you think of it, it is very complex, but it all goes almost automatically. This is natural to immanizing neural networks as they are adaptive machines. They are materializations of adaptive systems.

It is not in every sense wrong to say that neural networks are adaptive systems, but then we use a double, chain reference, with the word “system” referring to a system, which in turn refers to some real machinery – that is with the word “system” replacing a system, which replaces something real. As such it might in a sense not be wrong to mix the real, systems, and theory in one’s utterances, but to me such a story will not be very trustworthy. How do we get out of this mess of words?

In semiotics we find a solution of what our use of the word “system” may mean with regard to reality. This is not a practical solution, unfortunately, since it is, in our language, very difficult to explicitly say what one is referring to. I try to make it explicit by speaking of systems qua systems. Customarily a word in semiotic and linguistic literature is placed between double quotes if the word itself is referred to. Now, with double or chain reference, I introduce another, new level.

So systems in neural networks seem to really exist? The word for such a ‘really existing’ system is “mental image,” or “image” for short. Are such mental images systems qua systems, which really exist?! They refer to the real and they try to be a ‘copy’ of the real. But it cannot be a copy of the real itself, because their system is different – there is, for instance, no gravity. It can only copy a system of the real or project a system on the real. But saying that it is not a system qua system is in fact saying that no system at all exists or is possible. If system qua system does not gain reality somehow, than it does not exist at all. A further complexity is that this system itself has system too, and so on, ad infinitum.

Images usually try to be images of something real, but often they are fantasies, also in other mammals, I think. Such fantasies motivate us to do certain things.

To come back on the idea of the continuous checking of a neural network on whether a system represented in it conforms to the real and/or to the rest of the system… Since we, human beings, have the programming mechanism, we can become conscious of having thought, or perceived, something wrongly a moment earlier, and next we can think about it. For other animals I guess that their inner world just changes a little. This will lead to different behavior. This is not very different from how it goes with us initially, but since these animals lack much of the self-consciousness that we may have, they cannot in retrospect control their own thinking in the way we can, especially with regard to reference; that is retrospectively matching ones mental image with the real.

Reference is often viewed as something particular to language, but it is, of course, natural to any immanizing mirroring machine. What is particular for humans, is that we can manipulate these references; that we are capable of all kinds of chain reference without completely muddling our thoughts, and that we can imply a syntax on at least some of the references, namely words. This syntax is a unique system in itself. The same is true of our lexicon. Not that these systems stand completely on their own, of course – no system at all is separated from all other systems, except systems completely outside the real.

Coming back on semiotics, I think Charles Sanders Peirce would agree with me that, in this context, a system is a Second, a theory is a Third, and the transcendental, and real – read: perception – is a First,

So the mental, every-day’s, ordinary equivalent of a system to me is an image. For systems which we put on paper we need language in order to convey them to others, and sometimes also to understand them ourselves, but this should not deceive us. Ordinary, perceivable structure or system in reality can, in principle, largely be recognized by any mammal.

Human images and ‘systems’ are, of course, different because they are very much structured by language and self-consciousness.

Being subject and being object

The real just is. But the real is not completely chaotic and unintelligible, so the real ‘has’ form, system, or structure. As subjects, we just do not have any direct access to it. Because of this we don’t know for sure whether an image or system, which we conceive of, is conform the real or not.

But objectively you, or better, your neural network, is connected to the real, and it tends to mirror the real. It will require many more words to explain how some real, neural activation may lead to a certain conscious content, but I’ll skip that for now.

One of the few, slight controls we have in order to improve the mirroring by our neural machinery, is to innerly retract ourselves, without loosing attention. Another option is to let our emotions come to rest. Praying and meditation are well known ways to try to achieve this. Nevertheless, neural analysis will never be perfect.

The problem with subjectivity is, that anything which exists ‘in’ ‘it’ as ‘object,’ can, at another moment, in a certain sense, become (part of the) subject, and so on. We can ride a bicycle, so to say, because we have the riding on the bicycle inside our head. At that moment we are a bicycle-rider. There is no sharp line between the objective and the subjective – there is no sharp line between any system.

For us, that is subjectively, systems do exist as systems, and they are socially, consciously, and logically indeed real. One may disagree about whether the term “real” is appropriate here, if one believes that saying something is ‘subjectively real’ is self-contradictory, but I cannot see how anyone could think that subjective ‘things’ do not exist.

A theory is true if it mirrors past and future reality without exceptions – other than exceptions named in the theory. This, at least, is what is transcendentally true, since we need the real and our neural machinery to decide on the facts – others may name this “empirically true,” but I very much despise the assumptions and the rhetoric that usually comes with this term.

A system is correct if it mirrors past and future reality without exceptions – other than exceptions shown in the system. This is what is transcendentally correct.

Examples of systems which can only be immanently true, and not transcendentally, are ‘closed’ systems, such as not testable, religious belief systems, and mathematical systems. These are only true or false with regard to themselves. Even then we seldom conceive of them as such, because we make these systems for a certain purpose, of course.

In our head any image can be seen as a system qua system. Humans can self-consciously stimulate the checking by their neural machinery of the immanent structure of the images they have of something, however abstract. We do this largely by actively using, or acting on, what is transcendentally detected and immanized automatically by our neural system. We do this by using our attention vigorously as a search engine, while attending carefully what our neural machinery comes up with, and going over things again and again. Through this we check both validity and consistency. Scientists may have a special problem with this. They often lack the necessary freedom, because they usually suffer from a professional neuroses, being the formal systems which they live in. This neurotic attitude has a history of millennia.

Remark that although I say that the real enters us as something transcendent on our senses, it is immediately being immanized by our neural network based on earlier experiences. From this immanization many ‘checks’ arise, again automatically. Although we cannot do without this immanization, it will, of course, also hinder us to see the truth. It requires effort and hard work to analyze one’s images and consciousness. Therefore in practice most of our consciousness is simply carried over on us through language and education.

The checking of one’s mental images of things is done by all mammals. Their brains do not rest either. But they do not have the control that we have. If an animal would not be so much determined by its instincts, one would almost say that an animal has a more objective view of the world than we can ever have – this would probably rarely be true, but that requires a long argument. If mammals indeed have this more objective view, then they are, however, not able to share it with others, which, reciprocally, also means that they will have to invent more things themselves. This, in turn, is our biggest advantage. We, humans, come to nothing without the aid of others.

The idea is to project systems, images, theories, and interpretations onto reality, and to throw them away if they do not prove to fit. That is what we belief to do. In practice systems, theories, and ideas are often perceived as holy, real, or both.

Interpretations versus systems versus images versus content

From natural language we inherit the fact that we see systems as objective, and interpretations as subjective. When I speak of images instead of systems, then it has more subjective connotations again, but this largely depends on the concreteness of the image, and whether we talk about the image, or about the content of it. If we refer to an image, then this is an objective reference.

The content of an image is what we subjectively experience. But what we are imagining may, at another level, be objective again. The content of an image can, for instance, refer to what we see, or some concrete memory, in which case we tend to call it objective, but this is because of reference and chain reference. Let us not muddle our thoughts any further on this, just be aware of the dangers.

The danger is especially tricky in writing, because I know what I want to explain to you, and I may think to have written it down, but it may be completely unclear to the reader what I am referring at. It also costs me quite some effort to be self-conscious of all different levels of reference myself. One is easily confused.

Images versus interpretations

It is difficult to think about systems without objectifying them. When you agree with me that a system qua system is much like an image, then we can easily skip this problem, and ask what the difference is between an image of something and an interpretation of something, and what images and interpretations are in general.

An interpretation is a system, or an image, put into words. In this sense it is another word for “theory.” The emphasis with regard to interpretations is on the fact that it is a theory with regard to a certain dimension, or combination of dimensions, of the world. This holds for any theory, but few people are, or want to be, conscious of it.

What is important is that theories and systems usually have a limited topic, whereas interpretations can entail topics such as viewing the world as a chemical system. Okay, here I use the word “system” again, but, first it is clear that “system” here does not mean “system qua system,” but some structure of the real which I presuppose to be there, and, second, it is clear that I can never write down this system because of the sheer complexity of it.

Some interpretations I have used are subjective versus objective interpretations. In connecting these interpretations intelligibly, immanence and temporality play an important role.

Not all possible interpretations are necessarily commensurable. In principle I do not rule out post-modern notions with regard to this, but in this book I do strive for a monistic theory. I think that, for this monistic theory, we need different interpretations, not because of incommensurability, but because we have to think at a number of different levels, and because we otherwise muddle our thoughts. I have shown many examples with regard to reference, chain reference, and content. Concretely, even the terms we use may have different meanings in different interpretations. Nevertheless, and not surprisingly, some of the most interesting interpretations are analogical to each other. With regard to knowledge systems, such as neural machines, they often even refer to each other. These are special problems one encounters when thinking about thinking machines.

In a sense this is the same problem as in linguistics or semiotics with regard to words and signs. How do we know, in a linguistic or semiotic text, whether we are speaking about a word, or that what a word refers to. What a word refers to can either be viewed as the real, or as what is socially taken as real, or as meaning. With regard to analogical relations and reference, we make a distinction between (1) an analogy (or reference) between two interpretations, and (2) between an interpretation and the real. Although the real is not actually an interpretation, this structure-between-two-structures, so to say, is the same. Indeed, if one would know one theory to be true, then one could prove another theory from this.

One can, by the way, distinguish the same kind of analogical relations regarding meaning. Cognitivists have long believed that the meanings we give to whatever, can be caught in some kind of meaning-system. This project did cost a lot, and hindered the development of neural network theories considerably. Not that the analogy itself is completely nonsense, but, first, meaning does not reside completely in our head, secondly, one can never catch a temporal ‘thing,’ and, thirdly, it is too big to ever be caught.

Kinds of relations between systems or interpretations

Different images, systems, and interpretations may arise solely from different ways of looking at something. For instance, one may look at something with regard to how it works, or with regard to what it does.

Systems may have causal relations, for instance the heat in a micro-chip produced by the use of the electronic circuit in it, with the heat transferring to other parts of the chip, and influencing the electronic circuit. Another example of causal relations between systems is neural activation leading to neural learning through sensitization of synaptic connections, which in time leads to different activation patterns, and so on. In these two examples causal relations exist in both directions. In general all such relations should together somehow stabilize for a system to continue being the system that it is.

If we say that systems have causal relations, then we cannot mean that systems qua systems have causal relations. We could say so, of course, of images inside our head, since they truly exist, and one image can generate the next, but that is not the causality we are referring to here. I do not mean to refer to the causality of images, I mean to refer to causality ‘out there.’

Can it be said that reality in an electronic interpretation, and reality in a thermodynamic interpretation, are related causally? Said this way: “Yes,” because here is said that two aspects of the real are causally related. But can we say that certain interpretations have causal relations with each other? We have no causality within the interpretation itself.

Although we need more words when talking in terms of interpretations, as opposed to systems, I like their clarity above the muddle that we easily run into when speaking of systems. Knowledge is best represented in interpretations.

Systems that we think of as arising from a particular view – ‘pure’ interpretations – may equally well have ‘causal’ relations – the cause is ‘in the real’ but it is also represented in the system. How something works may, for instance, be taken as cause of what it does. The inter-molecular bounds between metal molecules cause a cannonball to be rigid.

There may be logical relations between systems and interpretations, for instance within mathematical systems. Here we do mean systems qua systems, since logical relations do not exist in the real.

There may also be analogies between systems, for instance between physical and mathematical systems. Here “system” can both refer to the real, and a system qua system.

More general, any correct system, and any true theory, can be taken as an analogy of the real with regard to certain aspects. This largely is what the word “true” means in science, outside mathematics and logic – and outside ordinary live, where truth just means that one is not lying. This kind of analogy is usually called “empirical.” It is often misused to stick one’s head in the sand, write down some illogical muddle of words, and wave all critics away with the argument that it is “empirically proven.”

There also exist other empirical relations. If I am right, an empirical relation is in essence a relation between different systems of the same object or substance, or between a system and this object or substance, or even between two or more things in the real – for example, a mirror-image in the mirror, or in a neural machine.

If you agree with me, then there is no difference with what I earlier called analogical relations. An example of two different systems of the same object or substance is when one describes something at different levels, like describing the flight of a cannonball, taking the ball as a single thing, or taking it as a cloud of molecules. Empirical relations within the real are often pointed out by statisticians. To me it usually just sounds like rhetoric. In essence these statisticians find a mathematical, statistical relation in their muddle of data, data which they consider to be ‘empirical,’ and next they objectify this mathematical, statistical relation as an empirical relation. They call this relation “empirical,” because they cannot find causality through statistics – of course. Statistics may be a nice tool, of course, but it is easily abused.

How we think about systems

Whether it is right or wrong, we usually think of correct systems as being real. The better a system fits reality, the more real it seems for the simple reason that there is no difference, and therefore the system as a system does not come to the foreground. The other way, and in our culture hardly ever self-consciously, it seems to me that we think of something as more real if we can project more systems onto it, or, in neural network terms, if our brain can mirror it in many possible ways. Also, something becomes more than “just a theory” if we invent more true theories.

What is more real to us than our systems and interpretations as we project them onto the world? Sure, if we view them self-consciously, then we notice that they are ours, and as such that they are not otherwise real, and then we may conclude, just like Emanuel Kant did, that we cannot know things on themselves. But we rarely ever do that. Most people don’t even know what it is to do that, and animals cannot do this. Subjectively such systems or interpretations of the world are the ‘things’ that constitute our consciousness and our being, and as such they are our reality. Maybe they are not what the real is which we are referring to, but they certainly are real, and they certainly are our reality. If not then we would have nothing, not even the cloud of elementary particles named “universe.”

The drawback is that this ‘ordinariness’ makes us forget to regularly check our perception of our world. We can check it – partly at least – through our neural machinery. We, humans, can partly check whether our machinery indeed mirrors the world, by comparing what it thinks and imagines with what it truly sees, except that the system will be disturbed by the same thoughts and images that one wants to check. Therefore, people who are too much determined by their own system, and hardly by their environment, will often go mad, except when it is something very stabilizing, such as with neurosis, where people keep fixated on certain things. Elder people will probably also be more stable and stubborn. It is said that for a scientific revolution to succeed, one has to wait till the elder professionals have retired.

I would like to say that we should better treat systems for what they are, or otherwise we will certainly muddle our thoughts. But this is impossible. Systems are not real, they are about the real, but they may equally well be taken as referring to the real.

It and us

Tell me what else a cannonball is except a system of interacting particles interpreted as being a cannonball? In other words, there is no cannonball ‘out there,’ except if we make it to be such, which does not mean that, without us seeing it as such, it would not be able to hurt us. There is system, or structure, out there. It is just that we cannot step out of ourselves, or the world we are in. Because we are locked in this world, and because we are constructed the way we are, our system detects some regularity or system and makes that bunch of particles into a cannonball. One cannot say that the cannonball is not real, nor that it is somehow a special cloud of particles in between all other particles, but the distinguishing of this cloud of molecules out of the universe of particles is not something which is part of that real object itself. Its distinction is something logical, something psychological, something neurological, and so on, and it is something empirical for a neural network.

Systems qua systems are not the real they are about unless they are systems about systems. Systems are about the real, but we ourselves are real, and as such our particles are in interaction with other particles of the universe, and we have/are a system which will more or less tend to mirror, in an abstract, immanizing and gathering way, what we encounter in this universe. It is because of this system, that we can deconstruct and construct all kinds of systems – or, as I do here, our own systems.

We need the illusion that objectivity exists. We need the illusion of a neural network starting as a tabula rasa. Emanuel Kant spoke of “das Ding an sich” – the real thing itself. I go even further than Kant, because I do not even assume there to be ‘things’ out there, neither do I believe in inborn categories. Metaphorically I use the idea of the cloud of particles called “universe.” It sounds almost religious, but, although we need the real to direct our thoughts, we cannot reach it. The material and energetic connection between the world and us exists through our neural network, but we can only let our neural network act correctly – if we succeed at all – by (partly) withdrawing.

Human society as a single neural network

Strictly speaking, interpretations, images, and memory, do not reside completely inside one’s head, nor inside one’s culture or language. It is easy to see this with regard to memory.

By example, suppose you look through a family, photo album, which you have not seen for years. In which situation will you have more memories along with the photographs, when you read it on your own, or when you read it together with other members of your family?[^]

[^]Michael Billig and/or John Shotter must have written about this, but I don’t know any titles

The latter of course, not because your family tells you what to think, but because together you remember more than each of you can think of individually. As such, in a strictly objective interpretation, your memory is not completely inside your head.

Neurologically it is even more simple and evident that this is the case, because a connection between neurons need not necessarily exist of axons, dendrites, and synapses – nothing in the system requires this. Information between neurons may equally well be transmitted through the air with the aid of sound and light. Qua neural system the medium is unimportant.

Since humans have speech, well developed ears, eyes, mouth, and hands, connections between us are even more entailing than any other animal. This said, such communication likely entails much less information than intracortical projections convey. This is one reason why our memory is indeed largely inside our head, but this is a relative, and not an absolute matter.

More important is the fact that we are not plants. We can walk around. As such our environment usually changes more often then we change ourselves, and so what we see and hear will not be associated as often, and thereby with less strength, as our own images and thoughts. But with regard to family this may be different, because we grew up with them, and we have many transcendent relations with them. People can be locked up in the strangest intimate relations. Psychotherapy often does no more than to immanize someone’s environment and personality. This also shows that using attention might be an art in itself.

The world sensing itself in us

Next to these connections with living beings around us – with other neural networks so to say – we are, of course, also connected with things like cannonballs, and vice versa. All together we – humans, cannonballs, the universe – are just one big cloud of interacting particles.[^]

[^]From this comes the mathematical idea that any intelligence can be seen as a form of information processing. See Howard Rheingold, Tools for Thought, MIT Press (on the Internet at http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/)

The assumed systems in the world are being mirrored inside our neural machine – this is a kind of identification. So, yes, here’s another reason why we have a memory of our own too, in a sense. We copy what we encounter. Next these copies become part of us. We generally are quite stubborn machines because we consist of so many copies, and each new copy will have to fill in meaningfully somewhere.

This mirroring, or copying, has a lot to do with attention. The closer one comes, inside our brains, near the attention mechanism, the more one can say that the neural activity there is “our own.” But if you, for instance, play a musical instrument, then that instrument will also be part of your remembering of the music you play.

So where does the world begin, and where do we end? Outside our eyes, ears, body? Where is the border? If you can’t tell me, then why would you doubt whether consciousness can be generated, and caused, by our body and the world? There are more of us. And nature, mother earth, and the weather often have a will of their own too, so we cannot say that we are the world – it is even difficult to say that we are ‘ourselves,’ given, for example, our sexual, jealous, self-preserving, and aggressive instincts.

We sometimes tend to call remembering “recognition” instead of “remembering.” The only difference is that the first is about auto-association and the latter is about pattern-association – in database terms the key is different.

From if-then to causality with regard to consciousness

We have concluded that systems are not real, or are ‘in another reality,’ but they can be correct. As such relations between them cannot be real either, but they may be correct. Viewed as such, talking about relations between systems is in fact talking about a system consisting of systems. Where have we seen that before... Gathering structures!

It may be beyond this book. I sometimes think that if I made an invention then this is it, but I do not know...

Usually people speak about relations between systems as being real. For instance, if I describe consciousness, that is a system of consciousness, and a neural system which I think to be conscious, then people would ask whether there is a causal relation between these systems, in other words, whether the neural machinery is causing consciousness, or whether there is ‘only’ an analogy, and no truly ‘scientific,’ causal explanation – and they think that if I would have given the latter, then I would have been a madman since everyone ‘knows’ that consciousness is not the kind of system science is about.

This, I think, is the everyday, non-self-conscious way that scientists would think about it. But, looking at it self-consciously now, I think everyone should agree with me that there is a fallacy in this way of thinking.

If one has multiple, correct systems of one-and-the-same ‘thing,’ then there will be all kinds of relations between all these systems. When there is a causal relation between heath and electricity, then there will also be logical and mathematical relations, both within, and between the heath system and the electrical system. The same holds for consciousness and neural networks, even though consciousness is, of course, of a completely different order than something like heath. Certain of these logical relations are, in our age, usually named empirical relations, and they are usually but erroneously taken as real in stead of logical. More exactly no relation can itself ever belong to the domain of the real, not even causality, conform Carl Popper.

In speaking about causal relations between systems, we refer to the real, whereas with regard to logical and mathematical relations, we refer to systems qua systems. There is more to logical relations than deduction. One can say that every causal relation has its logical counterpart, but more exactly the whole idea of causality is itself in the domain of logic, while referring to the real, just like with systems. If you have a problem with this, then you have a problem with most of science.

Between the system qua system of a neural machine and the system qua system of consciousness, as I design them in this book, I shall lay all kinds of relations. I may not have found every relation, but even if I could not name them exactly, I will often have given enough hints to know that it can be explained scientifically, and that someone will be able to find it.

Any simple, logical, and always true if-then relation between two or more of these systems must be taken as a – hypothesis of a – causal relation in the real. I add the adjective “simple,” because a causal chain of events can be very complex, and I first want to lay down the simple principle. This adjective will in practice be redundant since I also demand the if-then relation to be always true. That will hardly ever be the case ones things get more complex.

This said, I often am especially interested in semi-causal, complex relations between larger systems, especially consciousness and the world – here we are touching the voluntarism-determinism discussion. When we want something in the world, and act according to it, then we, in this case through our consciousness, cause something to happen in the world. This does not have the strict causality that we know of in physics, but neither would we find any such strict relation in a large physical apparatus – or it is at least very difficult to achieve, which makes building nuclear plants foolish. This does not mean that there is only chaos at the higher level. It just means that we cannot describe things as exactly as we can at a lower level. I think of it as that it is always possible that a lower level system breaks in. At a higher level we can give generalized descriptions. We can immanize who we are. This is analysis. If this analysis is correct, then we do have found a semi-causal relation, even if we do not know all the details of how this causal relation works precisely.

In this book I want to show how multiple systems regarding a certain neural machine are related. Certain systems among these are in ordinary language called consciousness. Consciousness in ordinary language can mean a number of different things. These differences are not self-consciously recognized, at least not by many people.

I do not really like to keep using the word system, though. If possible I shall speak of images and interpretations, with now and then making the connection with systems.

Explaining consciousness versus reductionism

In ordinary life to explain something is to bring it back to something that is known. Reductionists would like to be able to reduce everything to the smallest parts. Entailing both, and more realistically, I would like to connect as much systems and interpretations together as possible.

One may question how a ‘whole,’ such as a conscious idea, can have a causal relation with the smallest particles which as part of, for instance, a hand, shape this idea into something new in reality. One can hardly discover the whole, in this case consciousness, from its parts – how could one ever find a cannonball when looking at metal molecules? The other way round, if our neural network abstracts for us what “the whole” is, then it is possible, through analysis, to go after the parts. We find the same idea in public-key encryption techniques, where a key is encrypted in such a way, that it can, in practice, only be deciphered if one knows a secret, “private” key. The idea here is that the mathematical solution is simple in one direction, being the encryption, but difficult in the other direction, being the decryption, except when you know a certain secret, the private key, which you do not need for the encryption, so this secret itself does not have to be revealed, as with a password. In real live we usually do not have such a private key. We find some secrets by starting at the top system that we are studying, and others from the many other systems something consists of. Having discovered some things one can try to decipher other things, and so on. When this can be done in a time-space which does not take longer than the universe and humanity will exist, then someone might, in the end, find the solution.

With regard to physics one may gain the illusion that natural laws are about simple, singular things. But the schoolbook example of the flight of a cannonball is only simple as long as we can take the cannonball as a singular thing in stead of a bunch of molecules. The same is true of ‘gas,’ ‘energy,’ and so on.

The illusion of physics being reductionist – although this thought erodes because of quantum mechanics – comes from the fact that we do not ask questions with regard to the clustering of molecules or ‘energy,’ whereas viewing consciousness as a unit will immediately lead to long and unnecessary debates on voluntarism versus determinism.

With regard to this my point would be to say, that there is no smallest system – maybe there is a smallest particle somewhere, but if so then this is a very rare exception. A molecule is/has a system too, and so on. What is important is to understand the relation between all these systems/interpretations.

In doing so, reducing a system/interpretation to smaller parts is certainly helpful. It will explain a lot, but even in physics you cannot explain the movement of gas molecules or the movement of boiling water from these parts alone.

I don’t feel that my position has anything to do with holism. I only mean to say that a cannonball is first of all a single thing, and not a bunch of molecules, and most things happening with it can be explained with this assumption. But it might be, that another system breaks through with regard to something, for instance when heath is melting the metal.

In the same way we have our consciousness and our neurons. We do what we do from our thoughts, but of course our physical apparatus sometimes makes us do things based on other grounds. Not that consciousness does not objectively have this ground too, but usually there is, so to say, not a conflict – there is no difference between what we want and what we must want. But no system is outside of this universe – or if so then we would not know – so now and then other things brake through. A bad example is schizophrenia. A mild example is a headache, with an accompanying change in consciousness, maybe after a wonderful night.

We do what we do from our thoughts. The other way round all interactions between molecules in our body behave according to natural laws. Reductionists think of this solely as these natural laws determining what we are and do, but first remark that from these laws we cannot even describe the system of a cannonball or the air we breathe, and secondly that a lot of ‘our’ molecules stand in contact with molecules of ‘the world,’ and so on, from which in the end our consciousness of that world is arrived, and with this consciousness we can influence the world. In other words, there are other systems than micro-systems.

Are there? Is there any system? To be more precise, there are more systematic orderings of the real – which we can abstract as systems qua systems which are analogous with the real – than micro-orderings or micro-systems.

Tell me where the conflict or problem is? Where is the voluntarism-determinism ‘problem’? I don’t see it. I see different systems. I also see no system at all which is completely self-determined, but this is not my main argument.

Multi abstraction theory

I think it is time for a new view on science. To do science is to create or find as many true logos as one can find, at many different levels of abstraction, and to connect all of these in as many ways as possible such that everything fits.

One reason why this is important to me here, is that I want to relate common sense knowledge about consciousness, sense, meaning, and so on, to the working of my machinery.

Secondly the question about the nature of systems is important because we will, in this book, often encounter systems which are not, or at least not in the first place, interrelated causally, but logically, and empirically. What I mean is, that we can and do speak in many different ways about the same thing, by allowing for different views or interpretations. But it is not always clear whether we have a new interpretation of the same thing, or whether we speak about different things. Even more complex, there may be an interesting mixture of both.

With regard to terms and expressions of which we share a certain meaning within our language community, I only need a descriptive logic to achieve understanding. On many area’s this is, however, not sufficient. There I will first have to convey the meaning, among others, with the aid of metaphors, while trying to build up a terminology.

In my opinion this is not just analysis or deconstruction. It is also a process of construction. And, as in almost any social or philosophical study, it is, further more, a matter of self-reference. I mean, it would be strange if I could write this book without attention, without construction, and without deconstruction. In a truly neurotic mood I will even make sure that there are no more than five central topics in a section.

If I alternately and analogically talk about the working of my machinery, and about consciousness, while showing how something looks subjectively like this, and mechanically or objectively like that, and logically connecting all this together, then I will have explained consciousness exactly as far as I succeeded in explaining the working of this machinery.

I am not at all, in no sense what so ever, going to say that consciousness is an illusion. It is absolutely real. It is absolutely not an illusion. But it is neither something external to our body, which is ‘caused’ by our brains, nor something which can exist outside of the temporal dimension. I think my theory is religiously mostly inert. I disagree with Descartes’ dualism. My claim is that our consciousness is an inherent, but temporal part of the being of our body, and that it would be such of any such like machine, with all its ethical implications. So this is not a topic to be disregarded easily, even if you disagree with me, unless you would have no doubt whatsoever that I am wrong, but I cannot imagine that.

The real versus reality

I suggest to make a distinction between the real and reality. Reality can be taken as either the hypothetical, objective, all-entailing system of the real, or, subjectively, someone’s perception – or image – of what the real is. As such reality is the structure and ordering of the real as conceivable by someone or something. So reality is what is objectively or subjectively real. But since it is a system, this does not really solve our muddle of words, because we still don’t know whether by “reality” we mean “reality qua reality” or “what ‘reality’ is replacing or referring to.”

Kotarbiñski on objective, subjective, and relative interpretation

In order to prevent possible confusion which you may have experienced in this and the previous chapter, I shall give a name to the most important interpretations within which I have spoken and shall speak, so that I can refer to them.

From Tadeusz Kotarbiñski[^]

[^]Tadeusz Kotarbiñski, 1966 [1929 and 1961], Gnosiology, The Scientific Approach to the Theory of Knowledge, Oxford: Pergamon Press.

I learned that it is important to make a distinction between, first, an objective (or genetic) interpretation, second, a subjective (or psychological) interpretation, and third, a relative (or relativistic) interpretation of something. The relative interpretation is so called by Kotarbiñski because for this interpretation one must first establish whether something should be interpreted in a transcendent or in an immanent interpretation. I have used the distinction between subjective and objective interpretation a lot in the previous chapter. The ‘something’ Kotarbiñski speaks about is not a neural network but an image of something.

I, for the moment, do not want to interpret “objectivity” in the sense of “scientific objectivity.” Neither do I want to make any judgment about the notion and connotation of quality with regard to what people call “objective knowledge.” For me, in short, objectively our objective world is something which we are a part of, and subjectively our objective world is the world as we see it.

Objectively too our, or somebody else his, subjective world is the world as we see it. So what’s objectively our subjective world, and what is subjectively our objective world, is equal, but some connotations differ. Subjectively our, or somebody else his subjective world is the world as we, he, or they, see it through our, or their, own eyes, while realizing that we/they are observers.

The objective, material, and energetic interpretation

What is it for something, such as knowledge, to be called “objective”? The objective is not the real.

Let us start with the well known distinction between first, second, and third person. An observer, in the end, is a talker. It is from our ‘position’ within the talk-situation that I, the speaker/writer, become, what we usually call, the first person. You, the addressed and listener/reader, become the second person. The rest, often including my own body, and my own thoughts, when referred to, become the third person.

This said, with regard to the content of my talking, I may, for instance, talk about myself, I may talk with myself, or I may simply notice, and maybe express, something within myself, including perception, and feelings – feelings are a special, meaningful way of noticing or perceiving ‘things’ from within oneself. I say “I” in all three cases from the perspective of talking with you, reader/listener. Yet, with regard to what I am doing and perceiving, that is the ground of it all, I see a third, second, and first person.

The point that I want to make is that we encounter the real in exactly the same way. We interact with it in the second person. We are part of it in the first person. We talk about it in the third person. We refer to it only in the third person because we do not usually talk to the universe, world, trees, cannonballs, and so on, themselves, nor do we see them as part of us.

One thing to notice is that we are always in the position of all three persons at ones, depending from which position one looks.

More important to me is that, with regard to objectivity and subjectivity, the person I use in my talk may be different from the person in the content of that same talk. So in going from my talk to the content of my talk, I may go from one kind of person to another, and within that content there may be other content, and so on ad infinitum. I want to show that with regard to objectivity a first and/or a second person is referred to as a last step, usually implicitly, while with regard to subjectivity we end with a third person. This is a matter of where we direct our attention at, that is of whether we want to view something subjectively or objectively.

Our real world is the world we are part of, with a cannonball that hurts us even when we do not see it as such, nor even distinguish it, but which has color, stiffness, and other things that make it interact with us. It is Charles Sanders Peirce’s Qualisign – rhematic iconic Qualisign in full – in its purest form. Qua real world it (almost) transcends us. It is the world of a human fetus, and maybe more or less of autistic people too. The whole universe is first person. There is no you, nor it, only colors and sound.

But as there are colors, and as we can feel the world, and so on, we, or our neural network, will interact with it. Through immanization we ourselves, as a first person, and the world, as a second person, come into our existence – the first as, what Peirce would call, a (rhematic) iconic Sinsign, and the second as a (indexical) dicent Sinsign. As a first person we may now either view ourselves as an immanent part of the world, making everything first person again, but than immanized, or we may conceive of the world as a second person partner or opponent – remark; what is the difference if we cannot observe this from a third person position?

This is our objective world. It seems that in language and speech the first and the second person make each other possible. They can also both be brought about by a robot with an attentive neural network. The neural network can distinguish cannonballs, itself, and so on, and as such immanize and mirror the world. It does this through interaction – where attention and perception are a form of interaction too. As observers we see a first person, being the neural network, and a second person, being the world – as seen from the position of the neural network, of course.

The immanent, first person, world-which-we-are-part-of view, of the universe I call a material interpretation of this universe. Remark the structural properties of it in the iconic sense of many things looking like each other, from atoms, to sand, to trees, to neurons, to humans. You can only see this from an observer’s point of view, of course.

Using a material (or physiological) interpretation, with regard to neural networks, I look at the sensitivity, or synaptic weights, of neurons. I call this “material,” because it is about a physical, material property of a neuron. I am, in this book, not interested in what this looks like exactly. Maybe synaptic weight is higher when there is more neuro-transmitter available to a neuron, or maybe a synaptic gate or opening is larger? Fact is that neural weight, that is relatively permanent memory, is laid down in a change of matter. Even in writing this text down I materialize and memorize knowledge through ink on paper.

I can call a neuron “immanent” in the material sense of belonging to neurons which have been well attended to in their lifetime, for instance in the sense of often being activated by the attention mechanism, or not too often being prevented from activation by master neurons. Since a neuron can be more attended to or less attended to, it can be more immanent or more transcendent – both ‘transcendent’ and ‘immanent’ are relative terms to me.

The second person, world-which-we-interact-with view of our universe, is what we experience as our reality, or actuality, even more than the previous view. In German and Dutch we use the words “Wirklichkeit” and “werkelijkheid,” which literally mean “working-like,” or “act-ual-ity.” Subjectively it is almost impossible to not see this as equal to the real. Remark the existence, from an observer’s point of view, of the structural properties in an indexical, or causal sense. I shall refer to this as an energetic interpretation.

The difference between the material and the energetic interpretation is this: The material world which we are part of may change, but in the material interpretation we hardly notice this change, it is not to the foreground, and it is not explained in it.

In contrast to this, in the energetic interpretation the interaction between particles, and groups of particles, is to the foreground. An example is neural activation and neural learning. Using an energetic interpretation I for instance look at the distributed stimulation and activation of neurons. I call this “energetic,” because “energetic” means something like “working-out into something else.” That is exactly what stimulation and activation is about.

To the above, we have, of course, implicitly added ourselves as observer. As, and in so far, the real is connected to us through our senses and muscles, it belongs to us as first person. Then, just like when we talk about ourselves self-consciously in a third person, thereby objectifying ourselves, even though we use the first person pronoun “I,” the real becomes a third person from the point of view of ourselves as an observer. The part of the real which we tread as part of ourselves as talker/observer – often, but not necessarily this includes our body – we name “I,” but one cannot say, nor even think this, nor can we say “you,” without assuming an observer. Remark that, when discussing or thinking about this, we go from third to third to first person, that is from ourselves, to the person having the objective view, to what this view is a view of. A practical problem, of course, is, that we cannot look directly into the content of someone’s brains from an external point of view. We have no direct access to someone’s objective view.

In the first person, the attention machine which my body is, can distinguished matters such as objects. It is not yet knowledge qua knowledge, because I still am not there. The idea of extending ourselves to include a piece of the universe, or, to put it more clearly, to see part of the universe, or even the whole universe, as our body, may strike against all your feelings about objectivity and science, but rationally this idea is really very simple. It is simply the basic idea of our body being a material object, a neural attention and mirroring machine, which is connected with the world through senses and muscles. From this we have the idea – some would say the illusion, others would say the possibility – that we can have objective, trustworthy, generally acceptable, provable, scientific knowledge. We could not have objective knowledge, if we would all live in a real world which would, despite this realness, for each of us be a different real world. This thought is so strange to us, that we believe in objectivity, even if we have to discus what it is – but one could, for instance, build a logical system of each of us living on our own dimensions of a multi-dimensional, real world.

I largely go along with this idea of objectivity. A neural network, however, logically turns the world into a multi-dimensional world, so there is plenty of room for subjectivity.

Reference as mirroring

From the above you may have gained the idea that objectivity is just a linguistic or semiotic construct. This is not true. The semiotic idea of “reference” is equal to my idea of “mirroring,” except that language, and the programming mechanism, may play a role with regard to reference, and I have hardly taken that into account, when talking about mirroring. In a sense this makes it more simple, since we do not have to worry about things like chain reference then, and the first and second person simply are the attentive neural network and the world. As such this is not just in analogy with my explanation of the working of attentive neural networks, it is another example of how it works. Remember that language evolved in the real world. So, despite errors in language, which certainly exist too, it is not strange for linguistic and other explanations to match. Language too, in a sense, mirrors the real.

Remark, further more, that usually even immanent reference is mirroring something through some transcendent medium. For example, the real is not just chaotic, but it enters our sensors as a big heap of information, from which our neural network has to deduce the real. Even when we try to understand ourselves we have such a problem.

The subjective interpretation

What is it for something, like knowledge or images, to be called “subjective”? Here a knowing subject is presupposed, and an element of doubt is introduced – from which Descartes thought to have proven his own existence. Knowledge or images in a subjective interpretation is knowledge or are images belonging to someone. So in this interpretation we in the first place view the content of this knowledge or these images, and not what these are about objectively, that is we view the view, and not what the latter view is about, but we do not forget that it is about something. Therefore this truly is a third person view, even in last instance.

We cannot have anything ‘subjective,’ without a subject. Animals usually are not treated nor viewed as subjects, but we cannot do so here. They are attentive mirroring machines too. The daily-live problem is, of course, that they cannot express themselves in the way we can. This makes it difficult for us to express their thoughts even if we would know them, and this is something which we have to remember with regard to humans too. Our thoughts often are lies. For practical reasons we’ll usually have to live with these lies.

It has no use to treat transcendent matters subjectively – it is just too complex. More basically though, what is immanently subjective need not be conscious either, let alone self-conscious. In this book I rarely interpret this in a psychological way. I will explain how and when neural activation leads to consciousness, and when not. When it does not, this does not mean that the neural activation does not have any content or influence. In this book I am not interested in any concrete content. I just want to be able to speak of it in a general sense, and when I do so then I may explicitly say that I am using a subjective interpretation.

The essence is that in a subjective interpretation, with regard to a chain of reference, we more or less stop referring any further after the subject. So, instead of going from third to third to first person we go from third to third person, that is not from ourselves, to the person having an objective or a subjective view, to what this view is a view of, but from ourselves, to the person having an objective or a subjective view. This is not completely true because what the view of the subject is about will be part of the subjective interpretation too.[^]

[^]Charles Sanders Peirce in his sign-typology made a number of distinctions which in my system are subjective. The ground of all of them is, what Peirce calls, a Legisign. The (rhematic) Iconic Legisign (e.g. we hear someone speaking in a language which we recognize as a language but which we do not understand), the rhematic indexical Legisign (e.g. deictic words like ‘here,’ and ‘now’), and the dicent indexical Legisign (e.g. someone calling something) are things most mammals will understand too, mostly through their planning mechanism. Specifically human are the following Legisigns: the rhematic symbol (e.g. a word without any context, that is our lexicon), the dicent symbol (e.g. an ordinary proposition), and an Argument (symbolic and Legisign).

Scientific theories and the status of objectivity

Above I have defined objectivity and subjectivity in an objective interpretation. To make it a little more complex, subjectively, and also scientifically, the boundary between objectivity and subjectivity is vague. Ordinarily it has to do with how direct we think that something really is connected to us, and it has to do with the number of assumptions that we need to make with regard to something.

With regard to science this gets a little more complex. Here explication, logic, predictability, repeatability, experimentation, and measuring are essential. I do not want to delve into philosophy of science, but I think I can give you a rather nice view on it.

In science the world is (in last instance qua reference) more or less viewed from the first and second person, but the particularity is that the first person here is a logical construct, being a theory, plus logical deductions, and predictions, plus a theory and method of measurement. This is a trick, to let a pile of words – called a theory – mirror the world, instead of a pile of neurons – us, the observer.

Of course, the theory has to do this through us, so the trick is a bit false. This is a well known problem. It lead Karl Popper to the idea that in science we cannot prove a theory to be true – that is verification – but we can show it to be false – that is falsification – and any truly scientific theory should be falsifiable. Others claim that falsification is in fact just as difficult to achieve.

An important prerequisite for a new theory according to Karl Popper is, that the new theory should predict all and more about reality than the replaced theory did. If so, and if a lot of other prerequisites are met, then, even though it is a bit of a false trick, it goes in the right direction.

Images

It often helps me to call the distributed activation in the neural network an “image.” Here “image” is to be understood in the energetic sense, where it is not at all a mental image. I just call it an image because it has the same kind of structure and complexity, and because there are indeed relations with mental images. By calling all such structures images I can easily switch form one interpretation to the other, for instance from an energetic to a subjective interpretation, that is from neural activation to mental image.

Temporal versus static interpretation

I make a distinction between static interpretations and temporal interpretations. All these interpretations mentioned thus far can be both static or temporal.

The temporal material interpretation with regard to neural networks is about the physiology of learning, that is neural adaptation. The static material interpretation is about the physiology of what has been learned.

interpretation		immanent		transcendent
interpretation		static	temporal	static	temporal
objec- tive	material	learned	learning	experienced	...
objec- tive	energetic	attention	consciousness	brain status	brain activity
subjective		possibility	self-consciousness	(experience)	unconscious

Table 1: Four-dimensional table of some combinations of interpretations.

The temporal energetic interpretation with regard to neural networks or images, is about neural stimulation, sensory stimulation, and behavior in a physical sense. The static energetic interpretation is like viewing activation as what is called a momentum in physics. One can argue whether this interpretation makes sense. I think it does, because the neural network of our brains is modulated through stabilization mechanisms, and as such it more or less falls in certain states about 10 to 50 times per second. At each such state and moment one can find a certain attention pattern, and so on. Speaking about an attention pattern is speaking in an immanent static energetic interpretation. Speaking about an attention pattern of a cow, a tree, and a bench, tends more to speaking in the immanent static objective interpretation. Speaking about “seeing” or “perceiving a cow, a tree, and a bench,” is speaking in the immanent subjective interpretation.

The temporal objective interpretation is about consciousness. The temporal subjective interpretation is about self-consciousness.

All these interpretations can be either more transcendent, or more immanent.[^]

[^]Other than Kotarbiñski I attribute the terms ‘immanent’ and ‘transcendent’ also to subjective, objective, energetic and material images. Kotarbiñski nowhere speaks of transcendent or immanent images. He only speaks of transcendent or immanent interpretations of images, objects of images and content of images. To make it even more complex, in his story this is always an interpretation of an interpretation. Nevertheless I think that my interpretation of his interpretation of an interpretation is correct. In fact I largely say the same through my idea of chain reference, which in fact is interpretation of interpretations, and it is also equal to the process of semiosis as defined by Charles Sanders Peirce.

For writing-convenience I will usually speak of transcendent and immanent images as if they are separate things, but they never are, of course.

Kotarbiñski on gnosiology

My argument goes much further than that of Kotarbiñski. He writes about this topic under the heading “gnosiology.” “Gnosiology” is both the title of his book and the title of the most interesting part out of it, but further he never uses nor explains the word even ones in the book. Meant is a special, reistic kind of epistemology, and he explicitly stays within the domain of philosophy. Since for the moment my domain is meaning, images, and concepts, whereas psychologisms concern matters of truth and falsehood, I don’t have to fear being accused of it. No one can speak about neither truth nor falsehood, nor even have words, without psychological entities.

I think that scientific (r)evolution has a lot to do with the ‘growth’ or ‘(r)evolution’ of words. An example is the term ‘mass.’

The important point is not to keep the different interpretations separated, but to make them such that each is logically complete and consistent within itself and to connect them as much as possible. This is also practical since you can use one interpretation to understand another. A representationalist does not only reject the importance of this, he even claims that these connections need not be there for his theories to be true. This will, in the end, be proven not true. In practice any cognitivist will refer to biology if it suits him.

As I see it, the distinction between transcendent and immanent images is very real to Kotarbiñski although he cannot really explain it to his audience. A friend of him, of whom a paper is printed in the English translation of Kotarbiñski’s work, reports long discussions on the topic with him. Although this friend knows there is exciting news in it, he also disagrees with him, but he says he can’t say why “[i]n order not to abuse the hospitality of the Prezglad Filozoficzny”?! I think one reason why Kotarbiñski can’t make his point clear is that he, as a philosopher, does not dare to suggest a psychological interpretation. Partly I think this to be strange, since words, for example, wouldn’t be there without our brain, but nobody thinks that’s strange. If you say I am wrong because I am muddling domains or interpretations, then I would probably agree, but immediately ask what the connections between these domains are.

Thinking from within a number of interpretations

To tell you the truth, I don’t really know whether this treating-things-at-different-levels-of-interpretation thing is a new way of thinking in science? To me it is, especially when you explicitly do so within ‘one’ theory. This said the idea is not new to philosophers, I think, at least not to contemporary philosophers. Am I transforming the whole notion of a theory? I just don’t know. I’m just doing what I feel I have to do.

Subjectively transcendent and immanent images

I’ll give you a rule of thumb to distinguish between transcendent and immanent images.

First we must choose between a temporal, and static interpretation. Let’s start with the static image. This again comes in different interpretations.

First I’ll mention the subjective interpretations of the static interpretation: In these interpretations a visual image consists in the immanent interpretation of three to five items, which you can count when you close your eyes and try to remember what you’ve just seen, or remembered.

In the transcendent, subjective, static interpretation an image is much more vague. Call it an experience. To experience something is to know that something is absent. It is not ‘there,’ but knowing it to be absent makes it somehow present too (in another interpretation, of course). This known absence is one meaning of the word ‘transcendent.’ As I understand it, the American philosopher and semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce called this type of ‘being’ a First.[^]

[^]C.J.M. Schuyt. 1982/3. Het pragmatisme van Charles Sanders Peirce. Kennis en methode.

He also called it the domain of the possible. For instance, if I say to have an image of a friend, then I’m probably referring to the kind of image, well known to all of us, of which the content seems to be there, but yet it also has got stuck somewhere in my brain-box because of the size and complexity of it. It is not yet foregrounded, but in time I might be able to do so, in the form of a, possibly very complex, temporal image.

Transcendence in this case does not mean that the knowledge referred at is not immanent at all, it just means that it is not immanent at this moment.

The possibilities interpretation

Because of the possibility of this more transcendent, but not absolutely transcendent, static image, in time, this possibility can itself, again be seen in both a transcendent and an immanent way. I shall call this “a possibilities interpretation.” The possibilities interpretation is about the access we have to the transcendent image. This accessing will lay somewhere between remembering and analysis.

The image referred to in a possibilities interpretation of course does not objectively exist. It is not real. This said, we do not attend to what we do not attend to, and when we do attend to anything, then we do attend to it. So to us, subjectively, I mean, in a subjective possibilities interpretation, it does indeed exist. Such an existence I called “reality,” as opposed to “the real.” When people refer to what consciousness is they often refer to an immanent subjective possibilities image. The immanent objective possibilities image is the interpretation which cognitivists in fact use in their theories about schemata, and so on.

To ask for the immanent interpretation of the transcendent static interpretation is the same as asking whether or not you can foreground it in time, either through remembrance or analysis. This can be explained from within any temporal interpretation.

I demand each interpretation to be as complete and consistent within itself as possible. I don’t believe that the boundaries will be clear, and especially lower level systems will break through higher level structures and accompanying interpretations, because they are build up out of these lower level structures. I have no problem with tracking down cause and consequence to the smallest particles and forces, I just don’t believe it will give you many answers.

It is not really a problem that I might prove part of my theory from within my own thinking machine, to the contrary. If my thinking machine would think my theory about it is rubbish, then what else would it be?! Such reasoning will be circular, but its circle goes trough a real mechanism.

Biologically immanent neurons

Biologically the most immanent neurons will most likely be pyramid-cells. Not that other neurons cannot become immanent too, but these pyramid-cells certainly must be able to. Thus, a neuron can be immanent or transcendent in a biological interpretation too.

In essence the productive and the reproductive neural network are only connected through the biologically immanent neurons.

English versus Dutch with regard to spatial metaphors

I have some difficulty with spatial metaphors. It is a culturally determined way of thinking that is wrong. Even as a Dutchman I can experience that English is an awful language in this respect. I remember intentionally wanting to write in Dutch. For many important things which I wanted to write about, I could in English only find words based on spatial metaphors, such as, for instance, ‘to replace,’ which means in Dutch ‘vervangen.’ ‘Vangen’ means ‘to catch.’ ‘Ver-‘ is not translatable, I think. I use this word instead of ‘to stand for.’ To me a word or a symbol does not ‘stand for’ or even ‘replace’ something, it vervangt it. These things are very important if you really want to create new meaning at the level of not just, in terms of Lacan, the other but the Other too. Also I would agree to call a neuron in the immanent interpretation a ‘vervanger.’ So let’s create a new English word, namely: ‘replacer’ or ‘replacer-neuron.’ The ‘-er’ extension gives it some idea of action even in English.

I have long tried to enter temporality into our language, especially in the (metaphorical) meaning of its words. Instead of the, now also ‘Dutch’ word “structuur” (structure), I prefer to say “werking” (working). Maybe we can do this in English too?

Temporality itself I like to interpret as movement. In stead of “functie” (function), in Dutch I say “uitwerking” (working-out-[into-something]). To say that an image (or anything else) has a function is to say that it ‘works out on’ something, which is the same as saying that it ‘works into’ something else. This suggests movement. It is clear that temporality is involved, whereas the rather static meaning of the word ‘function’ does not show this.

All images are temporal images. The organization, or working, which is the result of the attention mechanism I at first called “verzameld” (collected) in Dutch, but in order to put even more movement into it I now also like to call it “verwerkt” (worked out/in), or even better “verwerkend” (working out/in). Maybe one would have to translate this with “working-inside.”

Another problem with the spatial metaphor is, for instance, the multidimensionality of our reality. In a sentence, for example, I think one should call every possible adjective which one can add to a noun a new dimension of the object it ‘replaces.’

Movies and consciousness

Consciousness comes into existence in the form of the creation of temporary images, and thus because of punctuation and immanization. I have also called this punctuation a “frame” – in fact I called it “a monture,” a word derived from the word ‘montage.’

In movies and video-programs a frame is the meaningful unit which comes into existence by way of montage. Montage is punctuation. The structure, or organization, of a good (educational) movie or video-program is exactly the same as that of a neural network as caused by an attention mechanism. The reason is, to put it very simple, that the movie or video-program is made for its viewers – with their human neural network and attention mechanism – and it is made by the human brains of television makers, or as I like to put it, by the brains of the movie itself. The reason is, further more, that everyone has to follow the movie or program at a fixed speed, specially with regard to television programs, because the pictures of the movie determine what you attend to. You cannot look about the scene yourself. The camera does that for you. Therefore, in most temporal interpretations, brains, minds and video programs can very well be used to illustrate and explain each other.

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